Post-game quotes

“It was a good line. … I thought Stepan’s line played very well. But I want to watch the tape. I’m not a good enough coach to give you a really good judgment right after the game about individual players … Larry Brooks will let you know that, also.”

On maturity if Gilroy and Del Zotto:

“I think Gilly has tried to be more aggressive … that’s a point of contention with us, as far as just defending harder. He’s trying. Michael I thought made some good plays tonight, stayed within himself. He’s looking for the long pass and made some good stretch plays.

“Sauer, again I don’t want to get ahead of myself because I want to watch tape, but I know Mike played within himself which he’s done all camp, which is why he’s still here.”

On Anisimov:

“I wanted to see Artie play with Kennedy and Callahan tonight. I thought they were a really good line in Jersey. … You have to be careful, at least I have to be careful with Artie, and not skip a step here, and throwing him in between (Gaborik and Frolov) because last year I moved him up and it just seemed to be a little too much. I think he’s playing with a ton of confidence right now and I don’t want to screw him up by giving him too much. But it could happen. I tried it with Derek Stepan, and he handled himself well in that situation, and I think Artie will too. But I want to look at some other things with him and a couple other players.”

On Stepan:

“He has an inner confidence about himself. I think he feels good about himself. I think he’s gone through some situations in his (college) career, the World Championships, things like that, it’s helped him grow as far as the mental maturity. I think that’s helped him through our camp here. … He reacts very well to a lot of different situations. He’s not flamboyant. I think he’s very respectful of the game and handles himself nicely in these situations. So we’ll see where it goes. I know I keep saying that, but we just want to see this through as we go through camp here with a couple more games.”

On Prospal being able to play this weekend vs. Ottawa:

“I think he will be. The thing that’s hurt Vinny is, we’ve skated hard in camp and that has reacted with his knee. He’s felt great, but it’s just hat we’ve done so much skating his knee hasn’t been able to handle that. We’re doing different things with it. I talked to him today after practice and we’re hoping that — he feels good — that he’ll be able to play.

“If he’s healthy enough, I’d like to see him play both of them. If it reacts OK. And he wants to. He’s so frustrated because he wants to play. He’s not a guy who wants to sit out any exhibition games at all. He’ll play them all if you want him to. I’d like to have him play both, just to get him some game situation that he can look at. And I want to try him at wing and at center, so it’s going to take me a little time with those two games to give him those opportunities.”

On Fedotenko:

“Feds flies under the radar (Tortorella then talked about how tough he’d been on Fedotenko over the years together). Even tonight, he made some really subtle plays that a lot of people won’t see or recognize. But he’s a solid guy offensively and defensively. He’s a guy, as a coach, when you’re looking down the bench in situations and you don’t have a lot of people, or whatever the situation may be, you can put him in all those spots. He continues to fight for a position and we’re still looking at him here, and he deserves the length he’s been here in camp.”

Rick Carpiniello, 26, was born and raised in Harrison and began working in The Journal News' sports department (back when it was The Reporter Dispatch and eight other newspapers) in October of 1977 after a year of covering high school sports as a stringer. In 1978 he began covering the New York Rangers and the National Hockey League. Carpiniello has been writing columns on everything from local sports to the big leagues since 2002.